OMG! Janitors with Guns! In Schools! OMG!

“The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education has approved the carrying of handguns by its custodial staff,” toledoblade.com. “‘Sitting back and doing nothing and hoping it doesn’t happen to you is just not good policy anymore,’ Supertendent Jamie Grime told The Blade. ‘Having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.'” Needless to say, the idea of arming custodial staff—janitors!—has civilian disarmament advocates’ proverbial knickers in a twist. “Multiple reports suggest that training ‘average citizens’ to defend shootings can prove disastrous” theatlanticwire.com asserts with only ABC’s bogus school shooting experiment as evidence. “WTF?!” Protest Easy Guns Tweets. “The U.S. will let killers have guns as easy as candy bars, but then expect our school custodians to shoot . . .” Funny that they don’t finish that thought.

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My cousin is a retired police officer and is now working as a high school costodian. What is the problem here, I don’t see any at all. There are many ritired Millitary and Police officers who still work. It would be a great position for these people!

You know, back when I was in school the custodial staff were actually well respected persons. You had to jump through some serious hoops to be school custodial and it was a decent paying and well respected position.

What cracks me up is that the elitists who wrote this turd are talking about janitors as if janitors are an insentient non-human life form that can’t read and isn’t aware when they’re being talked about. Imagine someone saying,”Oh my gosh, they’re even going to let (insert your occupation here) carry a gun! Now that’s just nuts!”. I’ve applied to be a janitor before, and if I ever get the call back I’ll be glad to go swing a mop full time for union pay and retirement. Besides, Dale’s right; when I was a kid we all looked up to the janitor. He was a lot closer to what our dads were like than any of the teachers or admin staff. He was a real man, perhaps the most accessible male role model in the whole school. And now that I think of it, whenever there was a stray dog loose on the playground Harold the janitor was the one they sent to get rid of it, so this new role kinda makes sense…

Same at my school. The custodial staff had to be certified boiler operators, certified in applying fertilizer and pesticides/hericides on the grounds, be able to operate various pieces of equipment to cut grass, remove snow, have operational knowledge of the various alarm systems, the electrical system, plumbing, heat and air conditioning. In many ways, they were smarter than some of the teachers. Frankly I’d trust a “janitor” with a gun more than I would trust one of mayor Bloomburg’s “highly trained” police officers to not shoot 9 bystanders while taking out a bad guy.

Works for me. I have serious reservations about arming teachers, only because they tend to be surrounded by kids all day and are supposed to be concentrating on teaching, not weapons retention. Custodians, counselors, vice principals, receptionists and others in the schools seem like much better candidates. And you don’t need to arm the whole staff – even 2 or 3 in a school could make a huge difference.

What’s the least number of shots required to end a spree killer’s ambitions? Zero, if even a single armed responder confronts them and they retreat then suicide. That doesn’t require an army of CCW staff, only “enough”.

Geez, not anon, you sound like some anti-gun nut, letting your feelings over rule your logic.

The teacher would be CC with a retention holster and it’s because the teacher is around kids all day is WHY you would want them to be the first to have a gun available if a mass murderer were to attack the school.

When seconds count, the janitor is a minute away and alot of kids can die in that minute.

Allow all staff that wish to be armed, to be armed. The armed custodian or school admin may be able to stop the shooter before he gets as far as the classroom. And if the shooter has made it to a classroom other armed staff members are closer than the police.

The first responders at Newtown were staff members that were unarmed. They went into harms way regardless.

Every school in America has people of that caliber on it’s staff. They just need a real way to defend the kids against the next Lanza.

I think arming the custodians is a brilliant first step. They’re not anchored in a classroom 80% of the day like a teacher is. They are the original “grey men” of the school system, going unnoticed and unremarked (or dismissed outright) by the students. They see and hear far more than any teacher, because they’re taking care of the school, not just a set of students.

I worked as a school custodian for 21 years before I retired. In order to get the position you had to be fingerprinted and go thru a thorough background investigation. One advantage that a custodian has over nearly any other staff member is intimate knowledge of the grounds and the buildings.

And because these positions are civil service type positions you will find a good many of these people, like myself, are veterans.

Custodians are in a way first responders. We are on site when fire and burgler alarms go off. We guide in police and fire fighters and on several occasions I put out fires and more than once chased and captured vandals and thieves.

More than one student has come to me for protection over my time as a school custodian.

Back in the day in NYC, the custodians (you called them janitors at your peril) were the highest paid people in the schools. My first ex-w was a senior teacher with a master’s degree, and she made less than the school custodian.

Be sure to remind people that bring up that ABC program that it was designed for the concealed carriers to fail. The “shooter” was a well trained police officer who happened to know exactly where the concealed carrier would be sitting in every case. Not to mention several other mistaken concepts that they issued as fact. I believe there is a well written critique of the show on the NRA website.

Yes, the main insight I got from that show is that CCW won’t be of much help if you’re the target of a professional assassination. While wearing clothing three sizes too big. And bulky gloves. And a helmet that obscures your vision.

In GA they have “school resource officers” in many of the schools. These folks are cops with uniforms and cars and all the paraphenalia that cops have. The only problem that I have with that is that if you are going to do something evil and go in a shoot a bunch of kids, who would you look to take out first? The answer is obvious. I don’t think that the cops should be in uniform and there should be other staff folks that are armed. Then you would have the element of surprise, you would have to take out more than one person and who would they be? You would make it too risky for these operations, in my feeble opinion.

An unopposed homicidal maniac loose in a school is still more dangerous than a shootout in a school. Sure, innocents might be harmed in shootout, but its a choice between possible harm and the guaranteed harm if the maniac is left to his own devices.

I think this is a great idea! It let’s the teachers concentrate on doing their jobs without having to worry about the kids getting their hands on the gun but still has the deterrent on the grounds.
On a completely unrelated note, OMG! Enough with the “OMG!” already!

It let’s the teachers concentrate on doing their jobs without having to worry about the kids getting their hands on the gun

Uhm, what? I have multiple friends and family members who carry concealed all the time at family functions where they’re playing with kids and picking them up and it’s never been an issue. A teacher will never be that close and touching like that with kids.

Armed custodians? Not exactly a new experience… as I recall my Naval service, the shipboard time was divided in between custodial work – making sure everything was clean, poished and painted in case the Admiral dropped by for tea – with frequent breaks to trade my various buckets for a web belt and 1911A1 to stand around topside making sure no one stole the submarine. Must have been good at it.. no one stole the boat while I was on watch!